Geodog

Documentation of the routine use of torture as Bush Administration policy, or how we lost the war on terrorism

Human Rights Watch has issued a chilling report documenting how George W. Bush has turned the United States into a nation that uses regularly tortures and "disappears" people. As the summary says:

In fact, the only exceptional aspect of the abuse at Abu Ghraib may have been that it was photographed. Detainees in U.S. custody in Afghanistan have testified that they experienced treatment similar to what happened in Abu Ghraib -- from beatings to prolonged sleep and sensory deprivation to being held naked -- as early as 2002. Comparable -- and, indeed, more extreme -- cases of torture and inhuman treatment have been extensively documented by the International Committee of the Red Cross and by journalists at numerous locations in Iraq outside Abu Ghraib.

This pattern of abuse did not result from the acts of individual soldiers who broke the rules. It resulted from decisions made by the Bush administration to bend, ignore, or cast rules aside....

Among the most disturbing cases, perhaps unprecedented in U.S. history, are the detainees who have simply been "disappeared." Perhaps out of concern that Guantánamo will eventually be monitored by the U.S. courts, certainly to ensure even greater secrecy, the Bush administration does not appear to hold its most sensitive and high-profile detainees there. Terrorism suspects like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, accused architect of the September 11 attacks, and Abu Zubaydah, a close aide of Osama bin Laden, are detained by the United States instead in "undisclosed locations," presumably outside the United States, with no access to the ICRC, no notification to families, no oversight of any sort of their treatment, and in most cases no acknowledgement that they are even being held. Human Rights Watch has pieced together information on 13 such detainees, apprehended in places such as Pakistan, Indonesia, Thailand, Morocco, and the United Arab Emirates, who have "disappeared" in U.S. custody...

the administration is now finding that it may be losing the war for hearts and minds around the world precisely because it threw those rules out. Rather than advance the war on terror, the widespread prisoner abuse has damaged efforts to build global support for countering terrorism. Indeed, each new photo of an American soldier humiliating an Iraqi could be considered a recruiting poster for al-Qaeda. Policies adopted to make the United States more secure from terrorism have in fact made it more vulnerable.

I couldn't say it any better myself -- actually I have already written similar things. It is terrible to have all one's worst fears confirmed.